Sequential Rhetoric: Using Freire and
Quintilian to Teach Students to Read and Create Comics

Abstract

Our comic combines visual literacy, progymnasmata, and
critical pedagogy to showcase a classroom study that used
comics production to teach visual literacy. The comic first
looks at comics criticism, visual rhetoric, and comics
scholarship to set a base to build a methodology build in
critical pedagogy and ancient rhetoric. Critical pedagogy’s
tradition of inviting students to find meaning in the origin
of ideas fits in with having students design and study a
medium that’s often overlooked during their college
experience. Such an approach echoes Freire’s ideas of using
critical strategies as an effective model for change.
Progymnasmata, and Quintilian’s work in general, allows
students to approach the new medium of comics through
reading and production through an ancient rhetorical
practice that relies on a step-by-step process. Looking at
Quintilian's pedagogy, we demonstrate a modern classroom
study that uses progymnasmata to make the strange familiar
while introducing visuality. The actual study is briefly
discussed as well. This amalgamation of ancient rhetoric,
comics studies, and critical pedagogy is the basis of the
research behind this pieces’ goal of exploring comics as a
multimodal means of composition.

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Creator's Statements

We decided to present our argument through an omniscient
narrator that mimics the tone and moves of the academic
genre’s tones and invisible (and partially objective)
narrator. This means that instead of relying on a
traditional avatar like most comics do, it relies on
academic writing and technical instruction techniques (like
Jody Culkin, Mitch Altman, Andie Nordgren, and Jeff Keyzer
have done), where the narrator occasionally shows up, but
primarily lets the findings and arguments do the work. That
said, the teacher that bookends the story serves in many
ways as the narrator as do some of the characters.

Ideally, our comic would have been done by an artist, someone
like Jeff Lemire, Emily Carroll, Alex Ross, Scott McCloud,
Richard McGuire, Seth, Kate Beaton, Vitaly S. Alexius, Hope
Larson, Gabriel Rodriguez, or any other talented artist.
However that defeats the purpose of our argument: that
students and instructors can engage in the comics medium and
gain from its affordances. This is why the art relies on a
simple style based in examples of the medium, but done with
inadequate art training. However, this isn’t a weakness;
instead it embodies the call of the paper to get students
and scholars to write visually no matter the skill level
involved.

Original Contribution of Work

The goal of many contemporary compositionists,
rhetoricians, and professional/technical communication
scholars is to incorporate multimodal elements and
visual rhetoric into the classroom. Research in this
area, as well as the desire to use multimodal texts, is
nothing new or unique, but the practice itself has been
adopted slowly. Many reasons for this exist: courses are
already brimming over with content, competing mediums
don’t carry sufficient academic weight, and
accessibility concerns abound. These are legitimate
critiques; multimodality is complex and taxes an already
crowded composition and technical communication field.
Yet, a simple form of multimodality already exists and
has legitimate research to support it — comics. Comics is
a medium capable of handling many genres and
incorporating comics as a form of multimodality in
research, composition, rhetoric, and professional
communication is a practice that is simple. Since
publishing in comics is usually not at option, in order
to justify the analysis and creation of comics in the
classroom — and in turn, academia — one can turn to
established practices, in particular, critical pedagogy
and the ancient rhetoric practice of progymnasmata.

Comic Studies

Comics in academia isn’t a new idea either, though it’s
usually limited to being the subject of rhetorical
analysis in published articles or as a catalyst for
analysis in the classroom. If it’s used as a means for
composing or creation, it’s primarily for reflective and
autobiographical writing. These approaches are helpful
and important, but comics can be used in other academic
formats, including peer-reviewed research. Comics use
rhetorical skills to teach important lessons and
students can compose with comics to create arguments and
instructional texts. In the process of composing with
comics, students learn visual rhetoric and effectively
realize multimodal writing. This isn’t the end though.
Teaching students to compose with comics is the first
step toward arguing that comics can be a means of
publishing research in addition to the traditional
essay.

Comics studies is a steadily growing trend in academia
across multiple disciplines. The medium was once
considered merely pulp-art or a children’s genre (and in
some audiences still is), but many scholars (both in
popular culture and in academia) have worked for years
to show its potential and depth. Research has already
been done proving comics’ usefulness in the classroom
(from elementary to higher education) as a medium to
teach from and to analyze. Although many have argued for
comics’ positive influence, and there are comics that
have been accepted as textbooks and readers (see
McCloud; Losh, Alexander, Cannon; Gonick; etc.), the
majority of instructors and scholars are either unaware
such a movement exists, indifferent to the movement, or
unconvinced it’s legitimate.

Important and Academic-esque Comics

Usually titles like Maus,
Persepolis, or any of McCloud’s
non-fiction work come to mind when serious comics are
mentioned. These are a great start, but they are only
the surface of many more works that deserve further
exploration. The non-fiction genres that stray from
memoir and lie on the margins of academic scholarship
are a great place to start. These pieces include Colon
and Jacobson’s 9/11 pieces (the first a graphic
adaptation of the 9/11 commission report and the second
a history of the wars that followed), the journalism
cartoon movement (including Sacco’s books), McCloud’s
Chrome instructions (and earlier work), Paul Buhle’s
editorial work on multiple academic-themed
comics — including historical texts like Zinn’s adapted
People’s History — biographies, history tomes, technical
communication done in comics format (like Eisner’s work
and other instructional comics), post-modern
philosophical debates like in Logicomix, and the
textbook Understanding Comics done in comics form (see
Losh, Alexander, Cannon). This is the line where
entertainment and scholarship blur, which are explored
in the justification in our piece.

Comics, Progymnasmata, and Multimodality

Although the overall goal is to see the acceptance of
comics as a means to publish research findings (not to
replace the essay format, but to be a companion when
appropriate), this piece focuses on the initial
steps — teaching the idea to students as a goal to teach
visual rhetoric and multimodality. This piece looks at a
method of teaching that draws on critical pedagogy,
analyzes comics that read like scholarship, and has
students compose in that format. Critical pedagogy’s
tradition of inviting students to challenge the
authority and looking below the surface level to see
where meaning lies fits in with the idea of having
students compose in and study a medium that’s often
overlooked during their college experience. Such an
approach echoes Freire’s ideas of using critical
strategies as an effective model for change. He writes,
"the teacher presents the material to the students for
their consideration, an re-considers her earlier
considerations as the students express their own"
[Freire 1993, 81]).
In order for an acceptance of new media and mediums to
occur, it’s often necessary to engage students in the
process of discovering. Empirical evidence based on
students’ experiences can provide valuable evidence to
support the bigger goal of having the larger academic
community accept such a medium as a way to compose
arguments.

Progymnasmata, and Quintilian’s work in general, make up
another significant section of our piece. Combining
ancient rhetorical pedagogical practices with comics
studies hasn’t been explored. In addition, this piece
draws on critical pedagogy concepts of otherness and
oppression, in this case making a literal observation of
the inherently "other" medium of comics compared to the
safer essay and textual pieces. This amalgamation of
ancient rhetoric, comics studies, and critical pedagogy
is the basis of the research behind this pieces’ goal of
exploring comics as a multimodal means of
composition.